Sacrifices
by Anushka
Summary: Her leaving hadn't been an agreement, a mutual decision. They hadn't even talked about it. They both assumed they knew why it had to be done. Sacrifices have been made. Will things turn out okay again? Grissom angst. NS pairing. One shot.


**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

**A/N: **I have seriously hesitated about posting this here, because I was working on letting go of all the frustrations I'm feeling towards Grissom and his behavior towards Sara. But then again I wrote this a long time ago and it was just sitting on my computer among all the half finished fics, so I decided to go ahead and post this anyway. This is Grissom angst/ NS relationship. _He_ is Grissom and he is Nick.

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**Sacrifices**

_Grissom_

_He_ walked through his house, hugging the walls, like _he_ would do investigating a crime scene. This time, however, _he_ already knew the outcome. _He_ had walked the same route several times, but every time _he_ was amazed how she had been able to remove every single thing that could remind _him_ of her, of them.

_He_ didn't quite know what _he_ was feeling, how _he_ was supposed to feel, sad, relieved, angry, a mixture of all of them? _He_ looked around while descending the stairs, trying to absorb all the details of the house, which was supposed to bring happiness, but had only brought sadness upon them. It wasn't the house really. It was her and it was _him_.

The presence of the man _he_ had grown to hate startled _him_. Here he was, standing in his house. He had never bothered to enter this house before while she was still living there. _He_ knew he had spent several nights waiting in his car, watching them through the window, waiting for _him_ to make a mistake so she would go running to him. Didn't he know? Didn't he know she would do that anyway no matter if he was waiting for her outside in the cold or not?

_He_ turned _his_ face away from him, not wanting to acknowledge him, trying to figure out where _he_ had put _his_ spare gun.

"What are you doing here?" _His_ words didn't come out in the way _he_ had intended. _He_ had gone for the angry, betrayed sound, but instead _his_ words were whispers and _he_ wondered if he'd even heard them.

"She asked me to check up on you."

A long pause followed.

"What else did she ask you to do?" The meaning of the words were not lost on either one of them.

_Nick_

He didn't feel like lying anymore. All of it had been a lie, the beginning which was his end, the middle which consisted of him not wanting to let go of her and her running back to him night after night crying hot salty tears and the end which was the end of all the misery they created, and the beginning of so much more.

"She never asked me for anything. I'm responsible for all of this."

"You." The word was spoken with such animosity he winced.

"You and her". _He_ spat out the combination of the two words as if they would poison _him_ if they stayed together in _his_ mind a second longer.

And again he didn't feel the need to lie, to hide.

"Not while you were together." He revealed so much by admitting that, yet it must lead to so many other questions. Questions he didn't know the answers to.

"I always knew it was you. She was mine. You never should have gone near her."

"She was yours." He emphasized the _was_. The confused look on _his_ face told him his usage of the past tense didn't go unnoticed by _him_.

"Get out." _He_ didn't exactly yell at him, but the way _he_ spoke chilled him to the core.

It didn't make sense, none of it did. Him being here, her being gone, all of them being alone, him convincing her to find out what would happen if she left him and would hook up with the man standing in front of him. It didn't make sense, but it had made sense at one time, surely it must have had he doubtingly thought. To him, in his selflessness ways, it had.

But all the selflessness and goodwill had destroyed so much more.

_Sara_

She glanced around the place one final time. It had been her safe haven. She shouldn't be here, she shouldn't have come here one last time. It was too much to deal with. It was unfair to be here when he would come back home.

Her leaving hadn't been an agreement, a mutual decision. They hadn't even talked about it. They both assumed they knew why it had to be done.

Running her finger along the desk which housed a stack of forensic journals she remembered the first time she had been standing exactly here. There had been so many first times. And last times as well.

She couldn't stay with him any longer. She had tried to blame him for everything. He had been the one who convinced her to find out what would happen and therefore he was the one responsible for all that happened.

If only she could believe that, but she couldn't. She had agreed and not very unwillingly. She wanted to know what the years of tension between herself and her boss meant. Those years had slowly destructed her until he had come along and put her back together.

And then when she finally after long years of feeling unworthy she felt loved again, _he_ had changed his mind. _He_ was pursuing her like _he_ had never done before, not even in the early days. Part of her wondered if _he_ had come to _his_ senses because _he_ saw she was happy **without** _him_.

She didn't care though, not really anyway, she thought. Until the person who was responsible for her happiness asked her if she didn't want to find out what could be between them. She knew it was just him looking out for her best interest and for his as well, but she had been angry with him anyway. How could he throw away what they had so easily? His words had hurt her and they had put doubt into her mind and from there everything in her life went downhill, but here and now was not the time to cry about that again. She had cried enough already, here, many times.

She turned around to see the man her heart belonged to, but he would never know that, in front of her. She shouldn't have come here, it would be too hard to leave now. She didn't look him in the eye and tried to pass him and get through the front door before she would start crying, before he would.

He grabbed her arm and she knew she had been waiting for him to do that, like she had been waiting for him to do so many things and he had done all of them, unlike the other man in her life.

The words that followed made her turn towards him and hold onto him tightly, not planning to ever let him go.

"You didn't think I would let you go, did you?"

**FIN**


End file.
